What the Church Teaches and Why In vitro fertilization (IVF) has been in the national news a lot lately, and many people of good will, including many Christians, struggle to understand where the Catholic Church is coming from on this issue. For couples facing the heartache of infertility, the questions are poignant and sincere: Isn’t it wonderful that science has come up with ways to achieve pregnancy if a couple can’t conceive in the normal fashion? Why wouldn’t the Church be all for any technique that allows childless couples to become parents? The first principle which puts this whole question into perspective is the affirmation that a child is always a gift, never a right. While marriage gives spouses the right to express their love for each other through the language of the body that sex is supposed to be, we do not have a “right” to a child. A child is, rather, a gift from God that flows from and is the fruit of the mutual gift of self that marriage is called to be. This point was eloquently expressed in the 1987 document Donum vitae which was issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger after being approved by Pope John Paul II: “A true and proper right to a child would be contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, ‘the supreme gift’ and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents. For this reason, the child has the right…to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents, and he also has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception” (#8). A medical lab technologist operates an embryo vitrification during an intra cytoplasmic sperm injection process (ICSI) at a laboratory in Paris Sept. 13, 2019. (OSV News photo/Christian Hartmann, Reuters) Notice that this paragraph begins by affirming that a child is not a right and ends by affirming the rights of the child. The first of these rights is the right to be conceived through an act of sexual love between his or her parents. This brings us to the second principle which the Church teaches regarding the treatment of infertility: the sexual union of spouses is the only setting worthy of the “coming to be” of a new human person. This principle is crucially important because what is at stake is the sacredness of the gift of sex as God designed it and the dignity of the child. In God’s design, we are meant to be literally “loved into life” through an act which expresses the total, personal self-giving of our parents. Sexual intercourse is intended by God to be the most intimate sign of the mutual gift of self which marriage is called to be. In sexual union, a husband and wife say with their bodies in a very private way what they said publicly on the altar on their wedding day: “I accept you completely as the gift from God that you are, and I give myself to you completely in return.” This mutual gift of self which is expressed in sexual union is not meant to end with the couple, but rather, makes them capable of the greatest possible gift: becoming co-creators with God in giving life to a new human person. What is more, the communion of love between a husband and wife is meant to mirror the love that exists among the persons of the Holy Trinity. In this communion of persons in whose image and likeness we have been created, God the Father is the Lover, God the Son is the Beloved, and the love between them is so real that it is actually another person – the Holy Spirit. In fact, St. Augustine described the Holy Trinity as “Lover, Loved, and Love.” In a similar way, through the privilege of procreation, God enables the love between a husband and wife to become “personified” in the gift of their child, who is literally the two of them in one flesh – with 23 chromosomes from the mother and 23 chromosomes from the father – a living reflection of their love and a permanent sign of their unity. And what is more, this new human being bears not only the image and likeness of his or her parents, but above all, the image and likeness of God. God designed sex so that the moment in which the two become “one flesh” is the means by which the two become “one flesh” in the person of their child. In other words, the Church is saying that the act that expresses most intimately the mutual gift of self between husband and wife is the way in which God wants to give spouses the gift of a child. It is for this reason that the Church always speaks of procreation rather than reproduction. Reproduction refers to the process of making a copy of something, such as a famous painting. We human beings produce, and what we produce is a product, and we subject products to quality control criteria and discard those that are substandard. Procreation refers to our participation in God’s creative power, His calling into existence from all eternity a person who is unique and unrepeatable, a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. God gives married couples the privilege of cooperating with Him in giving life to a new human being. God creates, and who He creates is a person, and He entrusts that person as a gift to his or her parents. If we reflect on our own experience, we can easily see that some settings simply are not suitable for the giving of priceless gifts. Suppose that your parents have a precious family heirloom that they would like to pass on to you. Imagine them making reservations at a nice restaurant, or perhaps inviting you into their home to present the gift. Whatever setting they choose, you can be sure that it will be commensurate to the specialness of the occasion and the value they place on the gift. Somehow, passing on a priceless family heirloom in the parking lot of a convenience store just wouldn’t seem to fit. Well, in a similar way, the Church is saying that the setting in which the gift of a child is given matters greatly, and the only place worthy of the passing on of that priceless gift is the mutual love of husband and wife expressed in the act of sexual union. This goes way beyond what is simply ideal to what is morally required: a child must never be simply the product of a technical procedure. Notice also, however, that the setting in which the gift is passed on does not change or diminish the value of the gift. A family heirloom passed on in the parking lot of a convenience store is no less precious than if it were formally presented in a fancy restaurant. In the same way, a child conceived outside the setting of the sexual union of spouses is still a priceless gift from God. This brings us to the second right of the child affirmed in the paragraph from Donum vitae previously quoted: regardless of the way in which a pregnancy is achieved, a child has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his or her conception. These principles reflect a profound reverence for the holy ground that we are standing on when it comes to marriage, sexuality, and procreation. This reverence also determines the essential moral difference between scientific technologies which are acceptable in treating infertility and those which are not. The principle which the Church teaches in this regard can be stated like this: technologies which assist sexual union between spouses to achieve conception are acceptable, while technologies which substitute for sexual union are not. Donum vitae describes the difference in these words: “If the technical means facilitates the conjugal act or helps it to reach its natural objective, it can be morally acceptable. If, on the other hand, the procedure were to replace the conjugal act, it is morally illicit” (#6). NaProTECHNOLOGY is a cutting-edge science of fertility developed by Dr. Thomas Hilgers, a Catholic OB/GYN who founded the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Hilgers spent three decades developing a set of medical and surgical protocols to diagnose and treat the underlying causes of infertility in a manner which is highly effective and completely in accord with the ethical principles taught by the Church. When all causes of infertility are included, success rates in achieving a pregnancy approach 80 percent with the use of NaProTECHNOLOGY. This success rate is far superior to the success rate of IVF. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of IVF cycles resulting in live births range from about 20 percent to 40 percent for women ages 40 and younger. In addition, the average base cost of a single IVF cycle falls between $14,000 and $20,000. To see the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend directory of all of the physicians who provide NaProTECHNOLOGY, please visit diocesefwsb.org/napro. It should be fairly easy to see from these principles that in vitro fertilization (IVF) fails to be a morally acceptable method for treating infertility. This is because IVF achieves conception by having technicians join sperm and ova in a laboratory petri dish, rather than through the loving, sexual embrace of husband and wife. The Catechism of the Catholic Church spells out why this widely used reproductive technology is seriously wrong, even more so when it relies on donor sperm or ova: “Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the right of the spouses to become a father and a mother only through each other. Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another. Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person” (#2376-2377). The way in which IVF is typically carried out in fertility clinics adds to the moral evil involved. First, semen from the man is usually obtained through an act of masturbation, which remains morally wrong even when done for the purpose of procreation. The only morally acceptable way to obtain a semen sample for the purpose of evaluating or treating infertility is to use a non-lubricated, perforated condom during a normal act of intercourse. This procedure maintains the procreative potential of marital relations while retaining some seminal fluid for the purpose of analysis. Secondly, the practice of IVF commonly involves the creation of “spare” embryos which are subsequently examined to determine which seem the “best.” Those embryos that are deemed “substandard” are typically destroyed, while those that seem healthy are either donated or frozen for future use. Typically, two to four embryos are implanted in the woman’s womb to increase the chances of producing a successful pregnancy. If more than one embryo thrives and a multiple pregnancy results, some clinics then offer “selective reduction,” a euphemism for aborting however many “excess” embryos the couple desires to do away with. This link between giving life and taking life may seem contradictory, but it is really quite logical, and reveals the radical nature of this reproductive technology. When human beings play God and begin to dispense life, they can just as readily begin to dispense death. The document Donum vitae described it like this: “The connection between in vitro fertilization and the voluntary destruction of human embryos occurs too often. This is significant: through these procedures, with apparently contrary purposes, life and death are subjected to the decision of man, who thus sets himself up as the giver of life and death by decree.” An article that appeared several years ago in the New York Times Magazine dealt with the increasing practice of directly targeting a twin produced through IVF in order to leave a “singleton.” When one woman was asked why she chose to “selectively reduce” one of her twins, she gave the following reply: “If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner – in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me – and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.” The hundreds of thousands of “spare” embryos created through IVF in this country that are simply discarded or “selectively reduced” or suspended in liquid nitrogen are someone’s children and grandchildren, and the Church cannot stand by silently while any innocent human life is treated without the dignity deserved. In contrast, the Church sees the suffering of couples who struggle with infertility and offers ethical and effective alternatives which respect the dignity of all involved. In our diocese alone, we have a total of 14 physicians who are trained in NaproTECHNOLOGY. We also have a diocesan ministry, Hope for the Journey, which offers spiritual and emotional support to couples who experience infertility. Information can be found at diocesefwsb.org/hopeforthejourney. We also highly recommend the national Catholic infertility ministry, Springs in the Desert, as well. Information can be found at springsinthedesert.org. The post IVF and Other Interventions for Infertility: appeared first on Today's Catholic.